Middle East & North Africa

2010

Your Majesty: The Committee to Protect Journalists is disappointed by the government’s continued use of the courts to suppress freedom of expression, and it urges you to use your constitutional prerogatives to end the unjust imprisonment of our colleague Driss Chahtan. We also ask you to instruct authorities to end the practice of withholding accreditation from journalists working for critical foreign news outlets.

Tags:

New York, March 12,
2010—The Committee to Protect
Journalists condemns Yemeni authorities’ seizure of equipment enabling the pan-Arab
satellite news channels Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera to broadcast live from the
country.

Tags:

New York, March 11, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a court decision to sentence the popular and award-winning Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas, left, to six months in prison and calls on Egyptian authorities to put an end to years-long harassment leveled against him.

Tags:

Dear Minister Barak: The Committee to Protect Journalists is alarmed by a recent spate of press freedom violations in the West Bank, including detentions, censorship, harassment, and physical attacks by Israeli soldiers. We ask that you ensure that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) examine the cases outlined below and discipline any individuals who are found to have committed violations.

New York, March 9, 2010—The number of journalists in jail rose in February as a relentless media crackdown continues in Iran. Authorities are now holding at least 52 journalists in prison, a third of all those in jail around the world, according to the latest monthly survey by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

New York, March 8, 2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a Kuwaiti court’s decision to fine a journalist and two newspapers for statements deemed offensive to the ruling family and the prime minister.

Tags:

On Saturday, Tunis airport customs officials confiscated two copies of CPJ’s annual report, Attacks on the Press, as well as five copies of the Arabic-language translation of the Middle East and North Africa section of the book from Tunisian rights lawyer Mohamed Abbou and journalist Lotfi Hidouri on their return from Morocco, the two men told CPJ.

Two weeks ago, Mohamed Abdel
Dayem, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program
Coordinator, and I were in Morocco to
hold meetings with government officials as well as journalists. In some ways
the trip was a success, but in other ways it left much to be desired from a
country that claims to be “at the forefront of liberalization in the region,”
to borrow language used by Morocco’s Communication Minister Khalid Naciri in
his meeting with CPJ on February 19.

Tags:

New York, March 1,2010—The Committee to Protect Journalists today called on Egyptian authorities to drop the charges against blogger Ahmad Mostafa, who is facing up to one year in prison pending the outcome of his ongoing trial in a military court.

Tags:

It is possible that so-called “Christmas Day bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab came to Yemen for Al-Qaeda terrorist training because it was out of the limelight. Until now, international media has sent in journalists intermittently to cover stories on Somali refugees or the Houthi rebellion in the North, but few foreign journalists are based here and the majority of coverage had come from local stringers or freelancers.